you complete me

I was reading Andrea Wulf's Magnificent Rebels (2022) which is about the first Romantics, who gathered around Jena in Germany in the late 18th, early nineteenth century - including, the Schellings (husband and wife), Fichte, Goethe, Hegel, Alexander Humboldt, August Wilhelm Humboldt, Caroline Humboldt, Novalis, Schiller, the Schlegel brothers. These preceded and inspired the English Romantics. 

Fichte talked about how, after reading Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, he had been 'living in a new world'. He decided to go and meet Kant but he didn't want to just turn up empty handed without any recommendation or evidence of his intellectual abilities. So, in 5 weeks, he wrote a book! His treatise was about religion, which is the question that Kant hadn't addressed in his three Critiques. 

Fichte sent the manuscript to Kant, and then went to meet him in person a while after, and Kant said the book was really good and he should publish it. Kant said that his own publisher would publish it. So, it got published, and there was a bit of a mix-up. Fichte's name was missing from a lot of the printed copies. The copies to be circulated locally had Fichte's name on them but those sent further afield didn't. This may have been strategic on the part of the publisher....a new book comes out that basically completes Kant's work, published by his publisher....it was probably written by Kant, right? 

Then it was so good that everybody was convinced that Kant wrote it. The great man graciously stepped forward and informed the world that Fichte wrote it, which established Fichte as the next great philosopher.